Why must this always happen?

Yesterday, I was informed that the Hollywood sludgebucket has struck again. This time, their mark is one of the more charming movies ever to take on the topic of artificial intelligence gone wrong… Short Circuit.

Filmstalker reports that they intend to remake this movie, with some of the original cast returning but they don’t say who… either way, I am not optimistic.

What’s this got to do with gaming, Dante?

Well… on the surface, not much. However, once I started exploring why I was upset about this news I started thinking about a few things relating to gaming. Several members of our group were present during one of our more successful campaigns, and many times since then I have been tempted to do an additional chapter… a new campaign with some of our old favorite characters.

Whenever I bring up this topic among those players, it usually meets with mixed results. Sometimes they are excited about the prospect of revisiting their old characters and taking them on new adventures. I think this same motivation forces movie execs to think that this type of film remake is a good idea… on the rare occasions where its not all about the money, I am sure that it is done out of a desire to take these (sometimes) classic characters out for another spin.

Vanir often plays the counterpoint that things are never as good the second time around. I have to believe that this sentiment is true in most of the cases… it can never be as good the second time around, film remakes involving good chemistry and great characters often fall flat, and things like this are never a good idea.

But the notion sure is fun. There’s a certain part of me that really hopes Hollywood comes to its senses before they go all Planet of the Apes on this thing, but I’m fairly certain they won’t. Oh well, chalk another up to economics. *sigh*